Hope Springs Eternal Interlude
by LemmingDancer
Summary: Phryne drops by Jack's house for an update on a case, but somehow ends up in his lap. An emotional, smutty one-shot fic that can be read as part of the longer fic or for pure smut value.


**Author's note: **This is pure smut. Emotional smut, yes, but still...smut. You have been warned. I've never written this sort of thing before, and I'm mortified with myself. But I'm actually less self-conscious about it than I am about angst. Weird.

Although there is absolutely no plot crossover and it could be enjoyed for what it is without reading the larger fic, this scene goes between chapters 3 and 4 of _Hope Springs Eternal_. For a more explicit version, find me (LemmingDancer) on Archive of Our Own, this is chapter 4 of _Hope Springs Eternal _on that site.

If you aren't reading the fic, all you have to know is that Phryne and Jack know they are in love, since he was abducted and she rescued him. She came over to Jack's house to discuss a case, ended up in his lap in his favorite leather armchair, and things have started to get a little heated. Jack is bare-chested and Phryne is sans dress, still in underclothes.

* * *

"I need you," Jack said, pulling Phryne closer. He ground his hips against hers, so she could feel how much he needed her. Her eyes widened, and she moved against him, the friction of their clothes only heightening the sensation.

Jack pulled off Phryne's camisole and fumbled with the clasps of her brassiere. When she tried to help him, he growled, took the strap in both hands and yanked, tearing the closures right out of the fabric. Phryne sucked in a breath.

"Do you have any idea…" she gasped as he moved his hips again "…how much that cost?" She nibbled his ear as she teased him.

"Punish me however you like." He was aching for touch, for intimacy, for love, and most of all for Phryne. Jack was done with waiting.

Phryne crushed her mouth to his, their tongues finding each other. She leaned in, pressing on his chest until he fell back into the chair with his legs hanging off the edge. Phryne paused, sitting astride his lap as she looked him over.

This was a new, somewhat…vulnerable position. Phryne was looking at him with what he could only call lustful admiration, like he was an exotic delicacy she intended to consume slowly, instead of a battered policeman with too many burdens. Rosie would never have taken charge like that; she had never looked at Jack like…

"Jack?" Phryne asked. "Where did you go?" She held her hands out to him palm first, and Jack pressed his hands to hers, their fingers twining.

Jack cleared a suddenly tight throat. "Just…the past."

Phryne frowned, the sadness and anger in her face making Jack wish he'd kept his mouth shut, but the expression was gone in an instant. She rotated her hips and Jack twitched with an involuntary gasp.

"Stay here with me. I can almost guarantee it'll be more fun." Phryne squeezed his hands, and then dropped them to either side of his head, bracing herself while she captured his mouth in a kiss. Jack cupped her silk clad backside, tentatively tracing his fingers across the fabric.

"Jack," she moaned into his mouth, as his fingers crept beneath her knickers. This piece of cloth was beginning to annoy him too, he decided. Apparently Phryne was having similar thoughts, because she leaned to the side and supported herself on one arm, stripping off the last of her clothing.

Her hands found the top of his trousers, and Phryne raised her eyebrows at him for permission, even as she dipped her fingers between the fabric and his skin. Jack could only nod mutely, wordless with passion and happiness. The woman he loved, beautiful, wild Phryne, was unfastening his trousers and pulling them and his drawers off his hips. He kicked them away.

Jack held on to her hips as if clinging to a life preserver on a sinking ship as Phryne straddled his lap. Without taking him into her, she settled back. Even after everything they'd been through, the sight of her, head thrown back as she gloried in touching him, gloried in being with Jack, was something he'd had never really believed he'd see. It was incredibly arousing, and he was perilously close to embarrassing himself.

"Please, don't…" he said hoarsely. "It's been…" so long since he'd been touched, so long since he'd been loved. He felt himself redden at this admission.

"Never again, Jack." Phryne leaned forward and kissed him, then sat back, taking him inside her. Their hands tangled with each other again as she sank down on him slowly. Jack's eyelids fluttered shut.

"Mmm," Jack said. Phryne smothered a chuckle.

"What?" he asked, eyes popping open. "Am I not…?" What? He had no idea what his deficiency was, but laughter seemed like an odd response to lovemaking.

"Oh no love," she hurried to reassure him, with a smile so tender and eyes so hungry that Jack even believed her. "We fit together like we were made for each other." Jack's head lolled back as Phryne moved again.

"Mmm." Chuckle. Glare.

"It's just…you're making your favorite biscuit sound at me. And I love being what makes you so happy." Her voice suddenly pitched higher and though she was still smiling, Jack had the terrible feeling she might cry. And that was even worse than laughing.

The distance between their bodies suddenly seemed unbearable to him, so Jack levered himself into a seated position.

"Well, you are delicious," he told her, forehead to forehead with her. He crushed his chest to hers, arms tight around her back as he reveled in the feel of her body along his, as close together as two people could be.

He loosened his arms so he could meet her gaze. Slowly, without looking away from each other's eyes, they began to move together. Jack's hands played across her skin, then gripped her hips, and her hand drifted down between them. The shreds of Jack's self control were being blown away by Phryne, still holding his eyes unflinchingly as they moved faster. When she cried out, throwing her head back and tightening around him spasmodically, he followed her only a moment later, his teeth on her shoulder as he shuddered in the throes of his own release.

They clung together for a long while, panting wordlessly. Phryne broke the silence first. "Jack love? Jack…?" she squeezed his shoulder with one hand. The other was still buried in his hair.

"Jack?" The tension in her voice finally shook Jack out of his blissful drifting. He realized with a start that his teeth were resting against the skin of Phryne's shoulder, and he jerked his head away.

"I'm sorry, did I hurt you?" he asked, mortified.

"It's alright love, you're gentle even at your most undone." Phryne rubbed at her shoulder, and Jack saw the he hadn't broken the skin. Playfully, she nipped his shoulder, then searched his eyes.

"Are you…?" Phryne seemed, for once, at a loss for words.

Jack wasn't sure what she was asking, but he answered her with a kiss, tender and deliberate, cupping her smooth cheek in one battered hand.

"I love you," he told her.

She smiled against his lips. "I love you too."


End file.
